Lecture 4-Media Violence .docx

Friday, January 31, 2014
Lecture 4 – Media Violence
Central Question and Current Context
• Central question: Does violence in the media contribute to violence in society?
• Context: Advances in media technology have changed the availability and
appearance of media violence; public discussions focus on how shocking media
violence is; regulations are relatively lax; real­world violence is down in North
America
Canada records its lowest homicide rate in more than 40 years
Theories of the Causes of Violence
• Biological Theories
o They talk about hormonal/genetic causes
o Some people are predisposed biologically to be violence and the media
would trigger these predispositions
• Ecological Theories
o Violent behaviour is influenced by long term environmental factors
o What in a person’s environment that makes them violent?
o long term environmental factors: family, education, religion and the media
 These influences can teach people about violence
o People are socialized into propensity for violence
o A specific type of ecological theory is cultivation:  People who have long term exposure to violent media, develop
perception and beliefs about violence in the real world
• Cognitive Theories
o People are able to process info (media) differently
 Look at the difference between children and adults
• Interactionist Theories
o They strongly consider both personal and environmental qualities
o Bring together the other theories
o Some people have a predisposition and then the predisposition is triggered
or maintained through long term socialization or environmental factors
o This theory is more successful and is used in a lot of theories today
W. James Potter’s Definition of Media Violence
• “Violence is a violation of a character’s physical or emotional well­being. It
includes two key elements—intentionality and harm—at least one of which must
be present. In addition…I recommend that all acts of violence be coded on eight
continua:
1. Level of act (from serious to minor)
2. Type of act (physical forms and verbal forms)
3. Intentionality (from premeditation to accident)
4. Degree of harm to victim
5. Type of harm (physical, emotional, psychological)
6. Level of openness (covert to overt)
7. Level of reality (from fantasy to full reality)
8. Level of humor (from farce to serious)”
• If one of these exist, it is still considered violent
Violent Content on Television
• How much violence is there on television? By every measure, there is a lot. And
American television has more than in Europe.
• What kind of moral context is violence shown in? “Good” characters often use
violence as a legitimate way to meet their goals.
• There is no one definition that everyone use; it depends on how you define it
Violent Content Elsewhere
• Violent video games are the biggest sellers
• Violent movies are extremely popular
• Violent content sometimes on the news (television and radio)
Theories of How Media Violence Causes Real­World Violence
• Bullet theory
o Violence depicted in the media, is internalized and replicated by the
audience
• Karen Dill, page 65, on why violent video game players mostly don’t believe in a
link with real­world violence: “The disconnect is primarily that the effects do not typically take the form that the players anticipate – namely a game play session
followed by murder.”
o Meaning a game play session followed by murder
o People can say I play video games, but I don’t go out and murder people
 This what the bullet theory suggests
 Concepts enters someone like a bullet
• Observational learning, also known as social learning
o Alternative theory
o These fall into the class of interactionist theories of media violence
o People learn behaviour when they see it depicted in the media but are not
aware they re learning it
o It occurs sub­consciously
o It can be strengthened or suppressed with real world interactions
• Requires: attention, retention, reproduction, motivation
o Pay attention to a particular kind of media content
o You have to remember it
o Once you paid attention to the model to the behaviour in the media and
retained it, you have to actually perform the behaviour you have seen
o You have to be motivated to imitate the behaviour in the model
o Punishment and reinforcement of that behaviour affects whether someone
will become violent
• Involves subtle, long­term cultivation of beliefs, assumptions, values that are
either reinforced or suppressed through social interactions in the real world
• Catalytic theory
• Under certain conditions, media violence can cause real­world violence. Those
conditions include: 1. violence is framed as legitimate; 2. high levels of media
consumption; 3. person has a psychological profile that predisposes him or her to
be more likely to be violent
o Gets away from socialization and family factors
o Focused more on the media content and individual factors
o Brings together different theories so it falls under interactionist theories
• Desensitization theory
• Media violence creates real­world violence by changing the way that the brain
responds to violence
• Involves brain chemistry over the long term; brain actually comes ot function
differently
• Overcomes the sensitizing of socialization
• Starting point: we are told that it is morally wrong and taught to be sensitive to it
(creates specific emotions) Empirically Evaluating Theories of Media